Excerpt from Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown; translation by me.
"…de grote groene ruimte, er…een telefoon…"
"Your wife's Dutch is wonderful."
Tom, who had stopped short of opening the storm door for his tutor, nodded.
"My partner was born in Rotterdam. She's also fluent in French."
The two men exchanged pleasantries, but the older man was relieved when he could lock the deadbolt behind the other.
"En een rode ballon…en een foto van—"
He paused outside of his daughter's room and peeked in. Tara was well on her way to sleep, but his attention was caught by the book—Ananke was translating from English as she read. Tom smiled and went to put away his books.
"Did you pass your quiz?" Ananke asked a quarter of an hour later. Most of the people in their section of The Hague spoke fluent English, but her partner had insisted on learning Dutch.
"I did," he smiled and kissed her chastely on the forehead. "Thank you for not giving in and helping me on my homework."
Ananke floated into the kitchen to pour herself a drink.
"Did Tara ask for Goodnight Moon?"
"Actually, she wanted Goedenacht Maan, but I asked at the bookstore yesterday and they said Goodnight Moon isn't published in Dutch. I found Bonsoir Lune, but I was thinking of holding off on teaching Temair French until she is ready to start school."
Tom watched her glide into the living room. They had lived together for six months, but had yet to make a commitment; not even referring to themselves as a couple. One of them would have to make a decision soon, however, before his visa expired.
"Who was Frank Breitkopf?"
Ananke jumped when she realized that Tom was in the doorway.
"What makes you think I know?"
"I'm surprised you're playing stupid," he replied after giving her a long look. He took a seat across from her. "Based on what Deputy Kassmeyer said, you and Frank had a lot in common."
"He liked to think we had a lot in common," Ananke said, reaching for her glass. "That was just Frank's way."
She took a long draft and sat back on the couch.
"I wish I could tell you that our relationship was completely professional, that I was only his protégé," Ananke said at length. "We spent a lot of time on my weapons and combat skills…but that's not the way it started.
"That man loved diners; I learned…real greasy spoons. His favorites were the ones that served his beloved strawberry milkshakes. Looking back, it's shocking to realize that we met in a classy bar outside of Fallon, Nevada."
When he leaned down to kiss me, my right haymaker missed him by a quarter of an inch. I looked him over. He was fifty-four if he was a day, as they say in the States, and not much to see.
"May I help you?" I asked, hoping he'd mistaken me for someone else.
"I love a woman with an accent," he replied with a coy smile.
I scowled and sat back down. Five other open seats at the bar and he chose the one right next to mine. When he spoke again, I had my fingers in a plate of nachos.
"Can I buy you a drink?"
"I can afford my own, thank you," I said coldly. I debated whether to flick cheese sauce in his face.
"Frank Breitkopf," he said after the bartender came back to refresh his scotch.
"Not caring!"
He tried to say something else, but I cut him off with a spew of derogatory French. Frank raised an eyebrow and I clarified.
"If you have not yet figured out that you hold no interest for me, we will take this outside."
I barely had time to wipe my hands before he pulled me out of my chair. I thought he was going to accept my challenge, but Frank dragged me into the handicapped bathroom, locked the door and slammed me into a wall. In this day, I would have broken him over my knee, but I was twenty-two then and not yet an adept.
His left hand traveled up my shirt as the right hand slid into my pants. He fondled my breast for a moment before slipping around to cup the small of my back. I tried to gain leverage, but Frank had already pressed our bodies together; in the space of a breath, his finger pushed inside me. He crooked it and I nearly screamed with unwilling pleasure…but his lips swiftly captured mine.
"He raped you right there on the bathroom floor?"
"Not that night…but there were others," she murmured. "Nights in which he couldn't be with his partner, Jane, and vented his frustration on me."
"It was Frank that led you into sin."
Ananke laughed. "I was 'sinning' long before I met Frank Breitkopf! He merely…persuaded…me to learn things I'd rather have not."
"Your expression says otherwise."
She was silent for a long time.
"Frank specialized in killing women," Ananke said. "He never came out and said it, but he implied that if I refused to work with him, I'd be visiting his trailer as an 'honored guest'."
"You were forced into slavery."
"I was coerced into an apprenticeship," she clarified. "I tried to run, but Frank always caught up to me. Perhaps I was easier to spot than I thought, if various ranges had footage of us together.
"I learned his method of torture. I learned what it meant to kill as he killed. When we lay together, I realized that sex, too, could be used as a means to an end. Not always denial of pleasure…sometimes an overabundance of pleasure. Where climax is no longer gratifying, but painful; where you can no longer recall what it is to be a normal woman or a normal man, because it seems like you've been trapped in this cycle forever."
Tom had moved onto the couch while Ananke told of meeting her mentor, and now that she hesitated, found himself holding her hand. They glanced down in unison, but neither pulled away.
"Did he ever torture you like that?"
She shook her head. "He tied me up the first few times; kept me locked in a motel room. I have no doubt he killed a number of women while I spent hours chained to the foot of a bed in the middle of nowhere.
"Eventually, though, I learned it was easier to comply. If I welcomed him to my bed as a lover, he would treat me gently and take care to be gone by morning."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tom had begun to pray for the mother of his child.
"How did you escape?"
"In my third year as his protégé, Frank summoned me to Las Vegas. I was surprised…he always stayed away from the glitz and glamour, but I received a letter instructing me to check in at the Excalibur under his real name.
"He wined and dined me, took me shopping, paid for spa treatments…Frank introduced me to everyone as his fiancée."
"He didn't try to kill you when you refused to marry him?"
"There was never any ring," Ananke confessed. "We spent five days together…I woke up one morning and he was gone. I didn't understand until I was reading about his death on a Lake Michigan beach…it was his way of saying goodbye."
She squeezed his hand and got to her feet. Ananke was nearly out of the living room when she looked back.
"I know you're going to light a candle for me the next time you go to church, but don't waste your time. I would rather be in my homeland with a partner who is reluctantly living with me for the sake of my daughter, than anywhere in America as the sex object of a serial killer."